Katrina vanden Heuvel: The GOP’s Extremists Are Using ‘Despicable Politics’

Katrina vanden Heuvel: The GOP’s Extremists Are Using ‘Despicable Politics’

Katrina vanden Heuvel: The GOP’s Extremists Are Using ‘Despicable Politics’

Republican fanatics are trying to take the country back to a time when workers had no rights.

Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

The fanatical Republican governors pushing through anti-labor legislation across the country are engaging in what The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel calls especially “despicable politics.” Vanden Heuvel joins MSNBC’s The Ed Show, along with The Nation’s John Nichols, to call on Democrats to cement their allegiance to the working class.

Responding to a newly proposed bill that would deny food stamps to families who have a member on strike, Heuvel says, “these extremists want to take this country back, back to a time when even Charles Dickens couldn’t have imagined such a stealth, cruel bill.”

Their actions, she says, are part of a 30-year, well-funded Republican strategy to destroy the rights of working people on a national scale. Instead of looking for enemies abroad, the US should now “reinvest in a country that is living on the carcass of the industrial base of the New Deal," vanden Heuvel says. "We can do better.”

—Sara Jerving

Support The Nation’s June Fundraising Campaign

With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.

As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Nation elevates progressive ideas, movements, and elected officials achieving real change across the country into the national conversation. At the same time, our journalists are exposing how crypto and AI-funded super PACs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to knock out candidates they oppose, reporting on the devastating impact of the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, and sounding the alarm on attempts by red states to quickly redraw electoral maps, disenfranchising Southern Black voters.

We can play this critical role because of support from readers like you. This June, we’re raising $20,000 to power The Nation’s independent journalism in the run-up to November’s immensely consequential elections.

It’s in our power to build a more just society, and your support at this critical moment brings us closer to that bold vision. I hope you’ll donate today.

Onward,

Katrina vanden Huevel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation

Ad Policy
x